Philosophy And/as/of Literature

The course will provide a solid, useful grounding in the central topics, trying to keep the two terminal points, philosophy and literature, always in contact with each other, and in such a way that they engage each other clearly, concretely, precisely, and humanely. Here questions arise concerning whether philosophy can be reduced to a kind or special genre of literature, what philosophical content may resist any such attempted reduction, what literature might show that philosophy can only say, and the distinctive self-transformative philosophical role that literature might play; furthermore, our emotional engagement with, and responses to, narrative fiction; the nature of literary language, narrative, point of view, truth in literature generally and poetry in particular; and last but not least, the "future of writing" (V. Flusser) in a world saturated by a culture highly dependent on media.